A measure of network latency is desirable for internet service providers to comply with service level agreements (SLA) with a client, and to market their products. In network latency measurements, active strategies are typically used. In an active latency measurement, a number of probe packets are sent across multiple paths between nodes A and B in a network, such as Level 2, Multi-Path (L2MP) network. The time it takes for each packet to traverse from node A to node B is measured. A statistical analysis of the data obtained is used to establish a diagnostic of the network latency. However, the number of equal cost multi-paths (ECMPs) between two given nodes A and B in the network grows exponentially with the number of nodes in the network. Thus, in active network latency measurements the number of probe packets that are required to be sent between nodes A and B grows exponentially with the size of the network. Such exponential growth creates a heavy burden for active latency measurement processes. Also, using an exponentially growing number of probe packets burdens network hardware, since other tasks may need to be processed simultaneously with the latency measurement.
In the figures, elements having the same reference number perform the same or similar functions.